THQ President: Console Games Will Soon Be Sold Like PC Games

[Timothy Chang]

THQ President: Console Games Will Soon Be Sold Like PC Games

Former Naughty Dog co-founder predicts more digital distribution and fewer $60 games in the future.


THQ President Jason Rubin predicts that the entire gaming industry will move closer to a PC-like model of digital sales and products being sold at a wider range of prices, with less emphasis on retail products.

"As time progresses, the entire industry will move closer to what we see in the PC model emerging now, which is a lot of different-sized games and different types of games that all get a place in the sun because you can buy things that aren't $60 boxed goods," Rubin said.

The former Naughty Dog co-founder thinks that the current retail model of having displays of similarly priced games next to each other has broken the industry down to a competition where the company with the bigger marketing budget wins.

"There's been a race to make the biggest, baddest-ass game," he says. "If you walk into a store as a gamer and see a massive $120 million dollar game next to a $30 million dollar game, and a $80 million marketing budget backed that $120 million game up, it's likely you're going to pull that one off the shelf."

Rubin is keen on seeing the industry "broaden out", presumably so that developers can market more of their games to gamers with different budgets. "I don't think gamers realize how good opening up the rules so that game developers can distribute and price as they want and do whatever they want is," he says.

Gamers in the console space already have access to games at different prices, since not every game is priced like a AAA title. Even so, it's good to see more companies focus on alternatives to the $60 retail price.

Source: Game Informer [https://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2012/07/27/the-new-face-of-thq.aspx]

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[medv4380]

If their is no Hard Copy, and no way for me to Lend them to my Brother then I will not buy them. End of Story.

 

[GAunderrated]

yeah we keep hearing people in the industry talk about games at 60 costing too much and not lasting. Oh but when its THEIR game it warrents 60 bucks because of the budget? Yeah, no i'm not buying it.

 

[dalek sec]

As long as I can still get a hard copy I'll buy it any way you want it.

If that's the way you need it.

Pretty much this for me as well. If there's no hard copy for me to hold onto then I'm sorry, I'll just have to take my money else where.

 

[thenumberthirteen]

Why they really need to get into the mind of the console market is that sub $60 games aren't nesicarily worse than full price games. I'm thinking of loads of less than full price PC games that are amazing, but offer a more limited experience.

 

[Sis]

"THQ President: Console Games Will Soon Be Sold Like PC Games"

Sooooooo, in stores and digitally? Just like NOW! WHAT A BRILLIANT MAN, THAT MAN.

 

[Weaver]

"There's been a race to make the biggest, baddest-ass game," he says. "If you walk into a store as a gamer and see a massive $120 million dollar game next to a $30 million dollar game, and a $80 million marketing budget backed that $120 million game up, it's likely you're going to pull that one off the shelf."

This, right here, is why publishers are absurdly inept. I feel the marketing budget on games is ludicrous. Gamers are informed now. Have you ever walked into a shop and gone "Hey, that game looks cool I'll just buy it without knowing anything about it!" Because I don't think you have. $60 is too much for the average person to just gamble with because the box art looks cool. This is how it was back in the NES days, and I sure as hell don't miss it. Now we're informed as consumers on a whole.

What, for example, what was the Marketing budget of Minecraft? $0? Because it's doing pretty well. These old business dinosaurs need to accept the new way things work. Take that marketing money and spend if on making an exceptional product, and our ever connected society will spread the good will for free.

 

[Jack Rascal]

There's a few things here I don't agree with. Fair enough it would be nice to have a place where all games get a similar spotlight. I have probably missed a ton of fantastic games simply because I have never heard of them. For consoles it's hard to find a place where all games already published or only planned are listed but I would not change to digital distribution easily.

I have not been into a store where similarly priced games are placed together. Maybe that's just where I live. Mostly the games are actually alphabetized and the price or budget of the game is not a factor. And no, I would not necessarily pick the game that has been advertized over a small budget "never heard of" game. I pick the game that interests me more, I read the back cover.

And the other problem I have is that there are no proper game stores where I live. We have Gamestop but I only buy from them if they have a pre-order exclusive I really want. I actually buy almost all of my games online, but as hard copies. I like my boxed goods. All shiny and bright and pretty on my shelve. On an online store I can sort their selection and they normally have more games "on display" than an actual store anyway. So again, the game with a bigger budget does not necessarily be the one I buy. They do not get a bigger spotlight.

I really wish we had a proper game store over here. As long as there are hard copies I will be buying them. I will favour a game that I can place on my shelve over a digital only copy.

Captcha: basket case. I might be, Captcha, I just might be.

 

[grigjd3]

"I don't think gamers realize how good opening up the rules so that game developers can distribute and price as they want and do whatever they want is" - I think anyone who regularly buys games from Steam realizes this far more than the industry does.

 

[GAunderrated]

"There's been a race to make the biggest, baddest-ass game," he says. "If you walk into a store as a gamer and see a massive $120 million dollar game next to a $30 million dollar game, and a $80 million marketing budget backed that $120 million game up, it's likely you're going to pull that one off the shelf."

This, right here, is why publishers are absurdly inept. I feel the marketing budget on games is ludicrous. Gamers are informed now. Have you ever walked into a shop and gone "Hey, that game looks cool I'll just buy it without knowing anything about it!" Because I don't think you have. $60 is too much for the average person to just gamble with because the box art looks cool. This is how it was back in the NES days, and I sure as hell don't miss it. Now we're informed as consumers on a whole.

What, for example, was the Marketing budget of Minecraft? $0? Because it's doing pretty well. These old business dinosaurs need to accept the new way things work. Take that marketing money and spend if on making an exceptional product, and our ever connected society will spread the good will for free.

Agreed, its a testament to how out of touch the are with their consumer base. I don't care if a game had a $0, 30k, or $300 million dollar budget, only if the game is fun and entertaining. If I look at two games and say "hmm well I know this is generic war shooter #256, and this other game looked like a lot of fun, i'll buy the fun game". The generic shooter may have had 300 million bucks of marketing but it didn't mean crap because the game was crap.

Marketing is great but in an era of access to information like we have, they need to start making things worth marketing before they bloat up the marketing budget (actually they should never bloat the marketing budget).

 

[trlkly]

As long as I can still get a hard copy I'll buy it any way you want it.

If that's the way you need it.

Pretty much this for me as well. If there's no hard copy for me to hold onto then I'm sorry, I'll just have to take my money else where.

There won't be any "else where." That's the point. The companies get to make money directly, without having to worry about the used games market. And I don't care as long as I can get the game.

Oh, and your brother can always, you know, just play your game.

 

[Frostbite3789]

$60 is too much for the average person to just gamble with because the box art looks cool. This is how it was back in the NES days

I can only guess Megaman just lucky then. Because that box art...

 

[tautologico]

This, right here, is why publishers are absurdly inept. I feel the marketing budget on games is ludicrous. Gamers are informed now. Have you ever walked into a shop and gone "Hey, that game looks cool I'll just buy it without knowing anything about it!" Because I don't think you have. $60 is too much for the average person to just gamble with because the box art looks cool. This is how it was back in the NES days, and I sure as hell don't miss it. Now we're informed as consumers on a whole.

They're somewhat inept, but we gamers also don't have access to all the information they have, so sometimes we think they're being dumb when actually this is not the case. In every medium of popular entertainment there's a small minority of people who are very well informed and almost immune to marketing. However, the market is much bigger than the enthusiasts. Have you seen the recent news about the marketing of BF3 on Facebook? EA spent around 5 million dollars to market BF3 on FB, but they attribute more than 12 millions in sales coming from the FB ads. This means there are people who bought BF3 because of a Facebook ad. A lot of people, actually. Marketing works, it may work only on the short term (opening weekends for movies, launch week for games, etc), but it works. That's why movie studios often spend more on marketing than on the movie itself, and why marketing budgets are skyrocketing for games.

What, for example, was the Marketing budget of Minecraft? $0? Because it's doing pretty well. These old business dinosaurs need to accept the new way things work. Take that marketing money and spend if on making an exceptional product, and our ever connected society will spread the good will for free.

Minecraft is an outlier, you can't try to deduce general rules of the market by looking at extraordinary cases. You can't expect every game to behave as Minecraft, any more than you can think that by just making an MMO you'll get the same amount of money that WoW gets.

 

[Stormz]

I always wanted all my games linked to an account so that I could easily be banned or hacked and lose 1000$ worth of games.

 

[Lizardon]

This is all I have to say.

"There's been a race to make the biggest, baddest-ass game"

Now I want to play an ass-game...

 

[ScruffyMcBalls]

Can someone tell this dude to fuck off, or can I?
What he doesn't seem to grasp, for one thing, is that huge marketing budgets only work on the butt-whistling, mouth-breathing morons that make up mainstream society. If a gamer wants to buy a game, chances are it's because he's done his homework, he's looked the game up online. You know why I can safely say that? There's basically no brick and mortar stores anymore. So where do you think most gamers buy their games? That's right, the internet. Sites like Amazon give a synopsis, a star-rating score, screenshots, trailers and if that wasn't enough you can simple google the title for even more information. And Amazon's not the only example, eBay, GameStop/GameStation's websites are all valid alternatives. For the gamer demographic, marketing is basically a waste of time because games already have a fairly even playing field. The only reason it doesn't look that way is brand recognition, because Call of Doody fishes billions of dollars everyone assumes it's because of the marketing, and not the fact that the games are churned out like clockwork each year, catering to a group of people who'd buy the game on the name alone, regardless of how shit it is.

Know what? I'm done. These assholes clearly aren't grasping the point, so let 'em have at it. Once they've sank the industry then me and my kind (people with more than two halves of a brain cell to rub together) can come in and fix their shit.

 

[Dandark]

I really hope he is right about the prices. Every single game that comes out costing the same high price regardless of quality or content is just silly. I really enjoyed a game like the Darkness 2 but it wasn't a $60 game and I wouldn't have bought it if I wasn't a big fan of the first one.